Why Elon Musk is a Marketing Genius? Decoding the marketing strategies of TESLA

Authored by (Umar Kayamkhani) | Board Executive Marketing Club (Crowd core)

Did you know that Tesla has $0 Marketing Budget? Yes, you read that right.

Ever wondered, how it still dominates the game ?

Have you ever pondered if Elon Musk is a True Marketing Genius ?

And are you aware of the strategies they use ?

The wait is finally over.

For all the Elon Musk & Tesla Fans,

Here’s a must read blog on “Why Elon Musk is a Marketing Genius?” which decodes the marketing strategies of Tesla.

Unless you live under a rock, you must know Elon Musk, the man who disrupted many industries by making the impossible into possible. Industries like Healthcare, Transportation, Aerospace, Automotive, Ai and Telecommunication, you just name it and somewhere Elon has to do something with it to revolutionize and change the whole game.

Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz and Elon Musk.

There’s this one thing common in all of these Entrepreneurs, “The ability to sell a vision”, the single most important characteristic trait of great marketers.

In this article, you will get to know more about how Elon leverages this ability to a great extent that his companies become renowned and his actions become celebrated, exactly what’s expected of the marketing genius.

TESLA – A “$0 Advertising Budget”

“TESLA has no marketing team, no chief marketing officer and no other marketing agency helping them.”

Yes, you read that right. There’s no advertisement spend of Tesla yet it is dominating the industry. Now why is that?

Key Lessons to Learn from Tesla:

1. Leverage Your CEO’s Social Media Presence:

Elon Musk has a strong social media presence and calling him a mere influencer with more than 34 million followers on twitter would be a big understatement. Elon goes all in on social media freely engaging with the audience resulting in indirectly promoting Tesla one way or another.

2. Focus on Gaining Earned Media:

Tesla has such an authentic connection with their consumers that while competitors spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 30-second commercial to play during a sports event,

Tesla sits back and lets their hardcore fans (including social media influencers) make content and promote it.

3. Encouraging Referral Programs:

Tesla knows the power of “word of mouth”, no advertisement can convince consumers to buy the product like how the word of mouth from their friends and family can do. Thus, they have attractive referral programs effectively enhancing the customer experience by offering USD 1000,00 credit & additional accessories and perks.

4. Art of Cross Promotion:

Since Elon owns other businesses namely Neuralink, SpaceX and Open Ai. He has mastered the art of cross promotion to the extent that it brings exceptional reach for both of the businesses involved. For example, Space X launched Tesla Roadster with a dummy driver named “Starman” into the space in the year 2018 which attracted an extensive worldwide media attention to both brands – Space X and Tesla.

5. Put Mission into All Actions: Tesla’s Mission is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” & making electric vehicles are not the only way they are pursuing this and this is what makes them different from their competitors. Here’s one example :

“ALWAYS ON YOUR FEED” – Strategy

Believe it or not, controversy multiplies the audience reach.

Elon is everywhere in our social media feeds like when he smoked weed with Joe Rogan, or when he was having fun with flamethrowers, or when he planned to blasts a Tesla into the space orbit, and then when it’s time to launch Cybertruck he’s already got our attention.

And that’s not it, there’s still more to it, he goes on to break two windows of the Cybertruck in front of the world media, bagging more than 250k orders on the same day.

Therefore, we can rightly say that It’s not about popping ads to the eyes of consumers rather it’s about making consumers themselves strong advocates of your brand (with the above mentioned key lessons) that they themselves become the sales and marketing team with their effective consumer generated content and it’s all possible only if you have the ability to sell your vision.